We are a grass roots organization located in both Israel and the United States. Our intention is to be pro-active on behalf of Israel. This means we will identify the topics that need examination, analysis and promotion. Our intention is to write accurately what is going on here in Israel rather than react to the anti-Israel media pieces that comprise most of today's media outlets.

Sunday, June 22, 2014

It's time to stop infantilising the Palestinians

The jubilant reaction of many Palestinians to the kidnapping of three
Israeli teenage boys has been met in the West with a bit of a shrug.
The official daily PA newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida has published cartoons mocking the three students and celebrating their capture. The Fatah Facebook page featured a cartoon of three rats dangling from a line. Sweets have been handed out on the streets (a traditional gesture of joy and celebration). Many children have been photographed by their parents, holding up three fingers and smiling. An internet campaign
gathers pace and “popular support for the abduction has continued to
proliferate on Palestinian social media” according to the journalist
Elhanan Miller. Hamas, of course, is exultant. Yes, Abu Mazen has
condemned the kidnap and there have been some brave Palestinian voices
raised in defence of the three youngsters, but their voices are
isolated; Palestinians calling for the return of the three students have
been threatened.
And yet, despite all this whooping and cheering about the trauma and
possible death of Naftali Fraenkel and Gilad Shaar, both 16, and Eyal
Yifrach, 19, the Palestinians will likely pay a very small price in the
international community or global public opinion. Why?
In part, because an anti-Zionist mindset that has taken root in the
West, and at its heart is unexamined assumption – that Israelis and
Palestinians are different kinds of people. Israelis have
agency, responsibility and choice, Palestinians do not. In short, the
world treats the Palestinians as children – ‘the pathology of paternalism’ it has been called
The unarticulated assumption of anti-Zionism is that Palestinians are
a driven people, dominated by circumstances and moved by emotions;
qualities associated with the world of nature. Israelis are the opposite; masters of all circumstances, rational and calculating; qualities associated with the world of culture.
This dichotomous thinking has three bad consequences.
First, by granting only one side to the conflict agency and
responsibility, the dichotomy distorts key events of the conflict (e.g.
the war of 1948, the collapse of the Camp David peace talks in 2000,
Gaza after the 2005 disengagement). The Palestinians are cast as passive
victims; a compelled people (Haaretz writer Yitkhak Laor claims the second intifada was “instigated” by … Israeli policy); a duped people (activist Tikva Honig-Parnass writes of “Barak’s pre-planned collapse of the Camp David talks in October 2000”); and a people beyond the reach of judgement.Academic Jacqueline Rose views
Palestinian suicide bombers as “people driven to extremes” and argues
that Israel has “the responsibility for [the] dilemma” of the suicide
bomber.
Second, the dichotomous understanding of Palestinians and Israelis
distorts our understanding of Israel’s security. The threats Israel
faces are discounted and the security measures taken by Israel reframed as motiveless and cruel acts. For example, the writer Shlomo Sand argues
that Israel falsely “portray[s] itself as a persecuted innocent” and he
claims that this portrayal, not real threats, has given Israeli society
“a well of deep-seated collective anxieties.” Ilan Pappe, an Israeli
academic now teaching in the UK, claims
that “Zionists” are “[c]ompelling a nation to be constantly at arms” by
stimulating “continual angst” through the abuse of Holocaust memory. He
dismisses “useful fabrications about Israelis suffering under intense
rocketing” as a “fantasy of apologists.” For the anti-Zionists, then,
Israel’s concern with security is either a pathology (an unconscious
psychological condition Israelis cannot break out of) or – this a
contradiction, note – a case of manipulation (a conscious political
ploy).
The third consequence of this dichotomous thinking about the nature
of the two peoples is the infantalisation of the Palestinians: they
remain perpetually below the age of responsibility; the source of their
behaviour always external to themselves, always located in Israel’s actions.
For example, when the Israeli novelist and Left-wing Zionist Amos Oz
complained that incitement by Palestinian intellectuals is one reason so
many Palestinians are “suffocated and poisoned by blind hate,” Yitzhak
Laor responded by accusing Oz of “incitement” against the Palestinians. Oz’s temerity in seeking to hold the Palestinians to account condemned him in Laor’s eyes.
The academic Jacqueline Rose has argued that Palestinian suicide bomber is a person compelled,
before admonishing Israel a few lines later for failing to take note of
Freud’s warning that “the forcefulness with which a group builds and
defends and defends its identity was the central question of modern
times.” (That’s just something for the cultured Israelis to worry about,
it seems.)
Of course, Israel has to compromise and divide the land, making
possible a Palestinian state. But if the Palestinians are treated as
children, never held accountable for cultivating a culture of hate, then
they will never make their own excruciating compromises for peace. And
without those compromises – in a Middle East departing further from the
norms of human behaviour by the day – Israel will not take risks for
peace. Nor should it.

Caroline Glick & Mark Levin: The Israeli Solution -- A One-State Pla

Why Israel Opposes International Forces in the Jordan Valley

U.S. scholars' group votes in favor of academic boycott of Israel

Yet another indication of the absolute corruption of American academia today. "US scholars' group votes in favor of academic boycott of Israel," from the Jerusalem Post, December 16: NEW YORK – The 5,000-member American Studies Association (ASA), which describes itself as “the nation’s oldest and largest association devoted to...http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/12/us-scholars-group-votes-in-favor-of-academic-boycott-of-israel.html

Israel Living Prophecy

A senior New Israel Fund officer told a U.S. official in 2010 that the disappearance of the Jewish state would not be a tragedy, according to a document that was leaked by Wikileaks...She commented that she believed that in 100 years Israel would be majority Arab and that the disappearance of a Jewish state would not be the tragedy that Israelis fear since it would become more democratic.

Mideast expert Michael Widlanski: Fatah is a joke

US-Israeli talks focus on Ahmadinejad's possible ouster

How to exploit the deep cracks forming in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's administration for removing the Iranian president was a top item on the agenda of the high-level talks between Barack Obama's advisers and Israeli officials at Mossad headquarters in Herzliya, north of Tel Aviv, Wednesday, July 29.

DEBKAfile's Iranian sources report that Ahmadinejad's cabinet is falling apart; of his original lineup of 21 ministers, only nine remain at their posts.

The Identity Of The Land

Why the Palestinians need to recognize the Jewish State

We do NOT support a 2-state solution

A January 2009 poll found that Americans oppose creating a Palestinian state by 45-31 percent. A February 2009 Maagar Mohot Survey Institute poll has also shown that Israelis oppose creating a Palestinian state by 51-32 percent.

Many other polls tell a similar story.

These figures suggest that Americans and Israelis have understood that creating a Palestinian state under current conditions will not bring peace but merely another terror state.

Netanya,Israel

Jerusalem At Night

Why reconstruct Gaza without making demands

- that Shalit be release without convicted terrorists being released by Israel in exchange,

- that the US be put in charge of the southern border to ensure that Hamas isn’t rearmed?

- that their three preconditions be accepted by Hamas, i.e. agree to all former agreements,recognize Israel and renounce terror

- that Hamas amend their Charter

- That Hamas disconnect from Iran

The answer is that they don’t want to.

Children of Hamas

Picture of Hamas children the media does not show you

IDF: Civilian Deaths in Gaza Less than 25% of Total

A maximum of 25% of the Palestinians killed in Gaza since the beginning of the Israeli operation are innocent civilians, the head of the IDF's Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration (CLA), Col. Moshe Levi, said Wednesday. According to Palestinian medical officials, Israel has killed some 1,000 Palestinians and more than half of them are civilians. Levi said the CLA had compiled a list with the names of 900 Palestinians killed during the fighting. He said that 150 names were of women, children and elderly, and that the maximum number of civilians killed so far was 250. Levi also dismissed claims that 43 Palestinians were killed in an IDF attack on a Hamas terror cell that was firing mortars at Israeli forces from within an UNRWA school in Jabalya. Levi said 21 Palestinians were killed in the attack, including a number of Hamas operatives. (Jerusalem Post)

Hamas teaching the children of Gaza

An Iranian reformist daily newspaper has criticized Hamas "for risking lives of civilians, amongst them children, by hiding its forces in nurseries and hospitals." This is reported in today's Palestinian daily Al-Ayyam. The Palestinian daily adds that in response the Iranian government has closed the newspaper.

"The Iranian news agency "Irna" reported yesterday, that the Iranian Culture Ministry has closed the reformist daily newspaper "Karjo Zaran", because it published a report that included criticism of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas). On December 30 the paper published a statement of a reformist student organization, that has criticized Hamas for risking lives of civilians, amongst them children, by hiding its forces in nurseries and hospitals. The statement was published whilst the Iranian government expresses a unified stands against Israel, and Tehran is overwhelmed by demonstrations against Israel."

[Al-Ayyam, Jan. 1, 2009] Thanks PMW

Iran-backed Hamas Rocket, Mortar Attacks and Nuclear Developments

9,400+ rockets and mortars fired from Gaza since 2003. [1]3,200+ rockets and mortars fired from Gaza in 2008 alone. [2]6,500+ rockets and mortars fired from Gaza since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. [3]543+ rockets and mortars fired from Gaza into Israeli territory during the ceasefire from June 19 to Dec. 19, 2008. [4]28 deaths caused by rockets and mortars fired from Gaza into Israel since 2001. The dead include Israelis, Palestinians and foreign workers. Since the ceasefire ended, Iran-backed Palestinian groups in Gaza fired rockets and mortars that killed an Israeli-Arab construction worker and a mother of four who was seeking shelter in a bus station as a rocket warning siren sounded. [5]1,000+ people in Israel injured from rockets and mortars fired from Gaza since 2001, including Israelis, Palestinians and foreign workers. Since the ceasefire, 44 Israelis have been injured and 200 have been treated for shock. [6]Thanks Israel Project

It began with this...

The British Foreign Office, November 2nd, 1917Dear Lord Rothschild,I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet.

“His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate theachievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities inPalestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.2

Signed,Arthur James Balfour[Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs]

Favorite Books

While Europe Slept

About Me

Semi-retired Professor, now also permanent resident of Israel;divides time between both countries-serves on several Boards of Directors for Israel advocacy groups;Chana, resident of Jerusalem, JCPA member

Syria is an Occupier-Are You Listening World?

As of this minute, Syria occupies at least 177 square miles of Lebanese soil. That you are now reading about it for the first time is as much a scandal as the occupation itself.

The news comes by way of a fact-finding survey of the Lebanese-Syrian border just produced by the International Lebanese Committee for UN Security Council Resolution 1559, an American NGO that has consultative status with the UN. In meticulous detail - supplemented by photographs and satellite images - the authors describe precisely where and how Lebanon has been infiltrated.

Though the land grabs are small affairs individually, they collectively add up to an area amounting to about 4% of Lebanese soil - in U.S. terms, the proportional equivalent of Arizona. Of particular note is that the area of Syrian conquest dwarves that of the Israeli-occupied Shebaa Farms which amount to an area of about 12 square miles.

It would be nice to see the Arab world protest this case of illegal occupation, given its passions about the subject.

Information worth Possessing

"Israel gave the Palestinians an autonomy in 42% of the West Bank and Gaza after the Oslo accords in the early 90's. Over 92% of Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza were then under the administration of the Palestinian Authority and its Chairman Yasser Arafat.

"Israel is surrounded by 10 hostile Arab countries who do not even recognize its right to exist ( Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Algeria, Lybia, Morocco, Tunisia, Aden) and Iran"